ORIGINAL LINK : https://blog.naver.com/PostView.naver?blogId=gounikorea&logNo=223304508592
Hello, everyone. I am Lee Yong-eun, a 16th reporter of the Ministry of Unification’s Unicorn Reporters! On March 30, 2023, the government-level North Korean Human Rights Report was released for the first time. The ‘North Korean Human Rights Report’ prepared by the Ministry of Unification based on the testimonies of 508 defectors vividly depicted the dire state of human rights in North Korea. Why are human rights in North Korea so poor? Is the North Korean regime really a devilish regime that suppresses the human rights of North Korean residents? From now on, let’s try to understand the psychology of the ‘devil regime’ North Korea from the perspective of peace studies. Let’s see it together with reporter Lee Yong-eun!
What is ‘Autistic Hostility’?
In fact, the suppression of human rights was not only carried out by North Korea. The 20th century, which was the era of the Cold War, was a century of violence and a dark age of human rights, where numerous human rights abuses were carried out under the name of ‘national security’. During the Cold War, the world was divided into two major forces, liberalism and socialism, centered on the United States and the Soviet Union. Many countries belonging to each camp ruthlessly trampled on the human rights of their citizens under the name of ‘security’ for ideological reasons.
△Dieter Senghaas (left) and his hesitation <지상의 평화를 위하여> (right) (Photo = Kyunghyang Newspaper, Lee Yong-eun reporter)
There was a person who was interested in and studied this gruesome human rights abuse problem of the Cold War. It was Dieter Senghaas, a German peace scholar. Senghaas focused on the international political and socio-cultural relevance of the ‘containment policy’. Senghaas argued that military expansion to suppress enemy attacks creates a militaristic culture, and this militaristic culture manifests itself in the form of oppressing its citizens.
Senghaas called this phenomenon ‘Autistic Hostility’. ‘Autistic hostility’ refers to expressing hostility impulsively and irrationally, deviating from logical and rational logic, like a patient with autism. In other words, it refers to the reason that requires a good other enemy, so to speak, a scapegoat, which is expressed in international politics such as military training or military expansion of the enemy state. And during the Cold War, many countries set their citizens as scapegoats.
However, we need to be careful when using the expression ‘autistic hostility’ as if we put quotation marks on the concept. That’s because this expression can be rude to people with autism. This is because Senghaas was a person of the past and could not take good care of people with disabilities due to the historical background at the time. In other words, ‘autistic hostility’ is the most appropriate for the original meaning, so I translated it this way.
North Korea’s ‘Autistic Hostility’ and Human Rights Issues
△North Korean Human Rights Report published by the Ministry of Unification (left) and North Korean Human Rights White Paper of the Unification Research Institute (right) (Photo = Ministry of Unification, Unification Research Institute)
△North Korean Human Rights Report published by the Ministry of Unification (left) and North Korean Human Rights White Paper (right) (Photo = Ministry of Unification, Unification Research Institute)
In this way, from the perspective of ‘autistic hostility’, we can see the North Korean human rights issue differently. North Korea has been in complete diplomatic isolation since the post-Cold War era of the 1990s. North Korea has been living in constant security instability while being cut off from the outside world. In response, North Korea has reacted sensitively when the US-South Korea joint training or the South Korean military strengthens its military power, and has made strong positions accompanied by aggressive expressions.
North Korea’s diplomatic isolation has continued to lead to strong militarization, which has become the background for the militaristic culture to take root in North Korean society, a stage before the occurrence of ‘autistic hostility’ as Senghaas said. The military-first ideology that North Korea put forward during the Kim Jong-il regime and the nuclear enhancement that the current North Korean regime is doing are all results of militarization due to diplomatic isolation and security instability from Senghaas’s perspective.
